"No, the technical word for a same sex practitioner is 'homosexual'... words like 'gay' and 'queer' are informal alternatives but happen to have a duel meaning because they already meant something else before they were expropriated."

Indeed "homosexual" is the technical word for "homosexual". This point is not in question with anyone. However, how many gay men and women want to called by the term homosexual? Regardless of it's technical meaning it has a derogatory feeling for too many people. Gays are comfortable being called gay as opposed to the technical term.

I remember a few years back in a park in Tokyo I was talking to a man and his wife from California. He was of German stock and she was Latino, born and raised in Cal. to parents from Mexico. The husband and I were doing most of the talking and is wife was mostly listening or looking after their kids. I have been out of the US for way too long, so I was asking him and his wife about the social and economic environment in California and I kept using the word Hispanics. I noticed the husband would always, without fail use the word Latinos in any answer to me, and it seemed somewhat deliberate. Eventually, when I had a chance, I asked as nicely as I could if the term Latino was preferable and he politely told me that the term Hispanic has come to have a derogatory feel for Latinos. I made it clear that I had no knowledge or sense of this and apologized if offended anyone. We continued to talk about social issues, etc. and I never used the word Hispanic again, and I haven't used it as a matter of course since then, whether I am speaking to or near a Latino or about Latinos.

I think of it as a human right that a class of people (most certainly ones that do others no harm because of that classification) should be called by a term that they are comfortable with.

So in this case calling a person homosexual on the excuse that it is the most precise term, when the term gay is just as universally understood is disingenuous, and you, km/keymaster know it.

Yes, gay can be used to describe something as laughable or uncool, but it is always used to describe a thing that is uncool, not a person. This is something you know and have shown in your usage of it, and something everyone else here who uses the English language regularly knows (though I myself don't use the this term for something "uncool" b/c some people are offended by it b/c of it's real or imagined origins). Now, the term gay to describe a person is an extremely specific term for that person's sexual orientation. This is something you also know.

The word "discriminate" can have two very different connotations dependent on how it is used in a sentence, but which meaning the user intends is clear to any native speaker of English. You, km, when it comes to words, are a very discriminating person. But I ask you out of respect to not use words such as "a homosexual" when it is heard by many as a discriminating term. You may argue that you don't actually use the term "homosexual" in your daily parlance. If this is the case, than your defense (or defence) of it's usage is not only disingenuous it is a waste of keystrokes.

Well you said that use of the word 'gay' to mean laughable "derives from a derogatory stereotypical association of those traits with homosexual people".

Actually, I believe I said the phrase "that's so gay" had such a derivation. The origins of the actual word "gay" to mean "male homosexual" probably did derive from stereotypical traits associated with homosexual people, although not necessarily derogatory ones. This is made obvious by the fact that some people are offended by the phrase while simultaneously content with the word itself ...

As for Lanovami's post, I personally don't see where we are in disagreement -- the bits you selected certainly aren't mutually exclusive thoughts.

And what is it about "gay" that means "ridiculous"? Where do you suppose that meaning evolved from? And why do many people get offended by that usage?

I don't use "gay" in that way. It is, however, used that way regularly. Used in that way it's perfectly understandable that gays would be offended.

I think that one aspect of this discussion that needs to be clarified is that language is never ever static. Or rather the only languages that are static are ones that don't get used--Latin is pretty static, for instance. I do this with my classes all the time. For instance, the word "silly" once meant "holy." The word "starve" once meant "die," without having anything to do with food. The word "curfew" once meant "cover the fire." And so on. Anyone who wants to tie the signification of a word to one, unchanging and well defined thing is fighting a losing battle.

Just to bung things up even further:I disagree with above ascribed definition of the Phrase"It's so gay" as meaning "uncool" on the grounds that atleast in my opinion, gay men are usually at the cuttingedge of what is (or what WILL BE) cool since they're moreoften than not responsible for setting the trends which eventually filter into the "straight" world.

_________________________."...or am I a butterfly dreaming she's a woman?"

And what is it about "gay" that means "ridiculous"? Where do you suppose that meaning evolved from?

I would say they're using it in the original sense of the word... see someone with a bright and garish pair of cheap Korean trainers and it's: "oh my God, you look so gay"... or maybe they see an old newsreel of a 1930's dance hall where everyone's twisting their ankles doing the charleston and it's: "what the f... that dance is so gay".

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And why do many people get offended by that usage?

They don't - just a small band of paranoid political correctos overthinking the phenomenon and trying to tell everyone else what to think and say.

And what is it about "gay" that means "ridiculous"? Where do you suppose that meaning evolved from?

I would say they're using it in the original sense of the word...

So wait, now "gay" originally meant "ridiculous"? What dictionary are you using? Because in the one's I'm looking at, the closest definition of "gay" as "ridiculous" I can find is: "brightly colored; showy", which isn't *nearly* the same thing ...

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They don't - just a small band of paranoid political correctos overthinking the phenomenon

And given the masculinist proclivities of the European mind, those senses are initially applied to women:

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Esp. of a woman: living by prostitution. Of a place: serving as a brothel

The application to women who prefer same sex relations doesn't occur until 1922, in a passage from Gertrude Stein, ultimately picked up by Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde and applied increasingly to men in those relations.

The sense that you pick up on doesn't appear until the 1970s:

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Foolish, stupid, socially inappropriate or disapproved of; ‘lame

I guess it's not surprising that the initial usage in this sense recorded by the OED is in an issue of Skateboard.

So I wonder what exactly one might mean by "original sense of the word."

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